Tips for Managing Your Mobile Workforce

Mobile technologies are not just part of our work lives; they are ingrained in everything we do. It's time to look beyond managing mobility in the enterprise as a technology issue and instead think about managing mobility as part of your corporate culture.

Technology and mobility in the workplace go hand in hand. Laptops have allowed us to leave our offices and have given us the freedom to travel anywhere in the world and still be able to access files stored in corporate databases. Cell phones and smartphones have extended that freedom, allowing us to set up virtual offices from just about anywhere. Cloud computing technologies potentially extend this mobility even further by providing access to critical files from almost everywhere on the planet. We're no longer limited to files on our computers, and we don't have to tunnel into the corporate network via VPN. Technology has untethered the world. As Peter Parker quoted his Uncle Ben in Spiderman, "With great power comes great responsibility." We can amend the phrase to read, "With great freedom comes great responsibility," or even, "With greater mobility in the workforce comes a huge challenge for companies to manage."

The logical solution is to hire a mobile operations manager for the IT department to oversee the increasing use of virtual employees, virtual teams and the mobile technologies that allow this to happen.